Exploring the TARDIS
by LadyOfNerdz
Summary: The TARDIS drifted in space while the Doctor completed some repairs, and Clara Oswald decided to explore while she waited for her next adventure.
1. The Beginning

Clara wandered out of the console room and into the hallways of the TARDIS, in the mood to explore. The Doctor was beneath the console, fixing something, she wasn't sure what. He had tried to explain what he was doing, but she'd lost him after about five seconds. Despite the convenient computer skills she had acquired on the day she had met him, Clara still had no idea what he was talking about most of the time. She had a vague hope that he was doing something that would make the TARDIS fly smoother, but she doubted it. The more they were being thrown around, the more he seemed to enjoy it. Quite the madman, her Doctor.

When he actually started talking to the machine, Clara realized that they were going to be here for a while, and she decided to leave him to it. She decided to have a look around the TARDIS, wondering what other impossible things he had hidden in this infinite blue box.

The hallways all looked the same. Metal walls. Metal floors. Metal doors that opened with red buttons. It looked so inhuman. Alien. Sometimes Clara forgot that the Doctor was an alien. He was over a thousand years old and from another world that was long since gone, but he looked so... human.

She ran her fingers along the wall as she walked, tracing an invisible path. She thought of the Labyrinth from Greek mythology, and a shiver ran down her spine. "Where's that yarn when I need it Ariadne?" she whispered. But there was no monster in this labyrinth, and she had Daedalus in the console room to find her if she got lost. Clara turned off the hallway and opened a door.

* * *

This story just sprung from my desire to explore the TARDIS. The chapters won't be very long, just Clara exploring the various rooms. If you have any ideas for rooms, or just places you want to see in the TARDIS, tell me! I'd love to hear your ideas!

As always, I own nothing. Doctor Who and everything about it is property of the BBC.


	2. The Kitchen

It was the kitchen. Clara looked back in confusion, she had thought that the kitchen was in the opposite direction. Had it moved? With a shrug, she walked inside. It had the potential to be a very nice kitchen, provided that the Doctor bothered to clean up after he cooked something. Which was rare.

Clara had only learned about the kitchen a few days ago, and she had tried to start cleaning it, just for hygiene's sake. It was an enormous, high quality kitchen, with state of the art appliances. The refrigerator always seemed to be stocked with fresh food, whatever Clara needed. The oven cooked faster than the normal oven's that she was used to, but apparently the alien technology hadn't found a way to stop food from burning, because her soufflés were still too beautiful to live.

There were two sinks, but only one was used for dishes. The Doctor had commandeered the second for laundry. She wasn't totally sure why there wasn't a laundry room, maybe there was and he'd lost it? But he did all his laundry in here. There was some clean laundry there now, shirts that he had just thrown in a pile, did he have an ironing board? He needed one. And there were the bowties, folded neatly. Clara giggled, he would care about those. She picked one up, running it through her fingers. She was still holding it when she left the kitchen.

* * *

Doctor Who is property of the BBC. I own nothing! I'm not worthy!


	3. Amy and Rory's Room

Clara walked down a few more hallways, then opened a door at random. This room was new, to her at least. It had a feeling of being lived in for a long time, then suddenly abandoned. Everything was covered in a layer of dust.

There was a bunk bed on the far side of the room, the bottom bunk neatly made, while the upper was messy, as though whoever had slept there has simply jumped down and walked away. Had there been children in here? She wondered. But no, there were clothes for adults here. She picked up a cardigan draped over the back of a chair, and spotted a leather jacket laying on the dresser.

She walked over to a vanity, ignoring the dust covered makeup that lay scattered across it. She put the cardigan down and picked up a small doll of a man in a ripped blue shirt and tie. It was old, worn and faded, but the face almost looked like the Doctor's, although the clothes were wrong. She wrapped the bowtie she was still holding around the doll's neck. "That's better." She set the doll back where she found it, taking the bowtie back, and spotted a picture frame, so covered in dust that the picture was impossible to see. She picked it up and blew on it, moving the dust into the air. She sneezed a few times, but the picture was viewable.

It was the Doctor, bowtie included, arm and arm with a redheaded woman and a blond man with a rather large nose. Nose boy was wearing the cardigan she had picked up earlier. The three were posing in front of a large castle that looked as though it were made out of diamonds. The structure glowed with its own with its own beautiful light, illumining the Doctor and his two friends.

Clara wondered who they were. The Doctor had never told her about them, but he never talked about any old friends, minus that Professor Song person, whoever he was. She knew that he had to have more friends out there somewhere, for how could you live so long alone? She looked around the sad room one last time, wondering why the two people who lived here had left so suddenly, and why they had never returned.

* * *

Sending Clara to Amy and Rory's old room was a particularly brilliant idea of one of my twitter followers.

Doctor Who is property of the BBC. I own nothing! I'm not worthy!


	4. The Library

The Library. It was enormous, though Clara wasn't sure why that surprised her. The main room had high, arching ceilings, showing multiple levels of side rooms that were packed full of books. She didn't know how many books were in here, nor did the Doctor, having never bothered to count. Probably millions. Clara walked down a line of shelving, reading the titles on the spines of the books. Some were in English, some were not. There were books of all shapes and sizes, hard back and paper back, brand new and falling apart.

The Doctor had been collecting them for his entire life, no wonder there were so many of them. She was sure that he had read them all, and probably had them all memorized as well. When she looked at the size of this place, it wasn't hard to believe that he actually did know everything. How could you not when you had all of this to learn from, and all the time in the universe to learn it?

Clara walked slowly through the biography section, though she didn't pick up any books to read. The Doctor had made her promise that she wouldn't read any books from this section without asking him first. She had been quite mad at him for asking, thinking herself quite past the age where she needed restrictions on her reading, but he had been persistent. He said that reading about Earth's future was dangerous. She thought he was being ridiculous, it wasn't like he didn't take her to see the future all the time, but he had seemed so genuinely worried that she had agreed. Looking at all the books around her now was making her regret that promise.

She walked all through the section, searching for one book in particular. She had found it the first time she had entered the library, _The History of the Time War_, and she wanted to find it again. But it was nowhere to be found. Had he hidden it, to make sure she wouldn't read it again? Clara had no idea, but she would be very annoyed with him if he had.

Accepting defeat, she walked out of that section to another one that she was allowed in, fiction. Since it wasn't true, the Doctor had no reason to stop her from reading any of the books in here, no matter if they had been published yet or not. Clara didn't spend that much of her time reading, but whenever she was bored, which was rare with the Doctor around, but it did happen, she came in here. She had noticed very early on that one of her favorite books, _Summer Falls_, wasn't in the library. She kept meaning to ask him why he didn't have it, but it seemed to slip her mind every time.

There were some books she knew of, like the complete works of Agatha Christie. She pulled one off the shelf, _Murder on the Orient Express_, and opened it out of curiosity, eyes widening in shock when she saw that it was published in the year 5,000,000,000. She was surprised that they were still printing paper books that far in the future, having been sure that everything would be electronic by then.

She wandered down the aisle a bit and pulled a book at random, looking at the title. She had never heard of it before. _The Adventurers of Kadlem._ She leaned against the shelf and read a couple of pages. It was about a group of aliens, travelling the universe in search of a long forgotten treasure, which lay hidden on Kadlem, a planet that didn't exist on any known map. Clara put the book back, making sure she remembered where it was so she could return and read it later. It seemed like a good story.

Near the end of the section, she spotted a group of books that looked familiar. She took a closer look and saw that she was right, the Harry Potter books. She saw the seven original books... but there were more here than just those. She smiled as she read the rest of the titles, there were going to be a lot of happy fans in the future. She pulled the newest book off the shelf, sat down on the floor, and began to read.

* * *

Any ideas for another room for Clara to visit? Send me a message!

Doctor Who is property of the BBC. I own nothing! I'm not worthy! Also, None of the works of Agatha Christie belong to me, and Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers.


	5. The Wardrobe

She didn't finish the book, but she made sure to remember where she had placed it on the shelf so she could return to it later. Even if she lost it, the Doctor could surely find it for her later. He seemed to know everything about this impossible box.

Clara wandered back into the hallway and choose the next door down. It occurred to her that the space between the doors was way too small for that huge library. She couldn't even fathom how that could even be possible. With a shake of her head, she pushed the button and waited until the door opened before walking into the darkness. She had to fumble around for a while until she found a light switch, made even harder by the fact that the switch didn't feel like any normal light switch.

Her eyes went wide when the lights flickered to life. The room was huge and filled with rows upon rows of clothing. It made department stores look small. And it had clothes from every historical era Clara knew of and even more from places she couldn't even imagine.

She picked out a row at random and moved down it, pulling out anything that caught her fancy. There were a number of cute dresses that would probably fit her. She didn't even want to think about how he had acquired them. But then, the amount of medieval clothing wasn't normal either.

In the very back corner she found a smaller rack with an assortment of coast, some normal, some downright strange. Clara assumed that they must be important, or they would be organized separately with the other things. There was a long black leather coat and a brown trench coat. In between them was a bright orange coat with celery on the lapel. Laying on top of the railing was a long, obnoxiously colored scarf. Maybe they were some sort of specialized alien clothing?

Out of the corner of her eyes she caught sight of something red. She turned to see the fez the Doctor had her collect money in the first day she had met him. It was sitting on a shelf by itself, almost like it was in a place of honor. On a shelf just below it was a stetson. There was a hole going through the middle, almost as though someone had shot it. It looked pretty destroyed to her, making Clara wonder why the Doctor had even kept the hat. Next to the shelves was a door, which Clara entered out of curiosity.

What she found made her laugh out loud. Every inch of the room's walls were filled with bowties. He had one in every color of the rainbow. Stripes. Polka dots. Argyle. Zig zags. Flowers. You name it. The Doctor had a bowtie in it. She took the bowtie she had found in the kitchen and traded it out for a pink flowery one, fully intending to tease him about it later.

* * *

Sorry it took so long to update! I've just been so busy, which is pretty sad, considering how short each chapter in this story is. Anyway, as usual, be sure to send me any ideas on other rooms for Clara to visit! I'm keeping a list of the ones you all have suggested!


End file.
